Jane Kimondo's blog

Crossroads Fund, in partnership with Chicago Foundation for Women and the Woods Fund of Chicago, recently completed the first pilot of a women of color leadership collaborative. The year long leadership project brought together 13 women of color working across issues in various Chicago neighborhoods to share, learn and build community.

In fiscal year 2013, Crossroads Fund gave out $326,929 in direct grants, training, consultation and public programs, supporting over 76 organizations working across a broad range of issues and communities. In our Seed Fund grant cycle alone, we received 98 applications, a new record for Crossroads Fund! As a funder of new and emerging grassroots groups, Crossroads Fund’s grantees’ areas of work mirror the most pressing issues of the day. We saw a large increase in grants for work around education justice, including first time funding for Raise Your Hand, a grassroots group focused on school closings, education funding and Tax Increment Financing or TIF resources.

Local activists joined an organizing tradition stretching back more than 80 years when they gathered last month for a training by the Highlander Center for Research and Education. Founded in rural Tennessee in 1932, the Highlander Center has been a space for movement building and training that has shaped the work of labor and civil rights organizers for generations. Rosa Parks attended an organizer training at the Highlander Center just six months before launching the sit-in that became the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

Five years into our Youth Fund for Social Change, we remain humbled and inspired by the many young people who are taking a stand and transforming systems that harm them and their peers. Over the past five years, we have seen young people advocate for a trauma center in their neighborhood, engage their elders to break cycles of violence, come out as “undocumented, unafraid and unapologetic,” and work to empower homeless LGBT youth, among other issues.

It took thousands of people camping out in parks around the country to convince the mainstream media to acknowledge that economic inequality is a major problem in our country. One study found that use of the words “income inequality” in the media increased more than 500% in the weeks after the Occupy Wall Street Movement began.